In this session, we ask the simple question: “What about fruits?” Many ecological studies treat fruits either as “flowers that were” or “seedlings that will be.” However, fruits are much more than the products of pollination or vessels for seeds. They are innovations that helped angiosperms conquer the Earth. They are pivotal food resources for taxa throughout the tree of life. They are morphological and chemical marvels, whose forms have been carefully shaped by millions of years of evolution. They are drivers of dispersal, invasion, population structure, and competition. They represent the climax of (a)sexual reproduction in plants and are thus central to plant fitness. Simply put, fruits touch on nearly every sub-discipline of ecology. And yet, fruits themselves are rarely the focus of ecological inquiry, often being used merely as proxies for some other variable (fitness, pollination success, etc.) of interest. As a result, many fundamental questions about fruits and their ecological roles remain largely unanswered. Why is it “worthwhile” for plants to make fruits? What makes for a “successful” fruit? How does the chemical composition of fruits influence their ecology? How do fruit traits evolve? What are the limits to fruit production? Do fruits facilitate invasion? Comprehensive attempts to synthesize our disparate knowledge about fruits with the goal of producing a unified body of theory are sadly lacking. However, a renaissance in fruit research may be on the horizon. As climatic zones shift, understanding how fruit traits influence dispersal becomes key to predicting the persistence of plant species. As the human population grows, so too does our need to produce more fruit for human consumption without losing genetic diversity, reducing a fruit’s nutritional value, or degrading the environment. As our world’s flora homogenizes, understanding the role of fruits as invasion mediators becomes paramount to our counter-offensive. This session intends to bring together a suite of researchers who have made studying fruit a core part of their research, each offering a unique perspective and approach. Throughout the session, the speakers will be challenged to put their research into a larger, more comprehensive context centered on the questions: How have fruits evolved and what ecological roles do they play in addition to facilitating plant reproduction? Additionally, speakers are encouraged to offer ways in which further research into fruit ecology can be stimulated.